


young man, i do believe you’re dying

by soliloquium



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Angst, Historical Hetalia, M/M, half assed relationships that aren’t really relationships, implied sex, or an attempt at it, references to atrocities, spamano - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 19:43:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18611224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soliloquium/pseuds/soliloquium
Summary: It’s 1946 and they’re broken.They find wholeness in each other, at night, with the lights off. Repeatedly.-This isn’t love. This is desperation. This is my fingers clawing at you, trying to find what I’ve lost.





	young man, i do believe you’re dying

**Author's Note:**

> Written at 2 am with little premeditation. I’m not really happy with a lot of my narrative but it caries the Angst I wanted so eh ?
> 
> Kudos & comments appreciated! They’re like fuel to my writing...fire.... n now I sleep.

They are so far from where they used to be and this felt right in all the wrong ways.

Spain wonders if Romano cares. He doesn’t seem to, but Spain knows better to base this on what Romano seems.

He slugs back to bottle of champagne with one hand in a restless, reckless motion and Spain resents how tall his shadow has become. He is golden in dim the candle light, (“should I-?” “No I like it better in the dark.”) all distant God and immaculate magnitude.

It is a quiet night in Barcelona. The outside is a mostly black hole of cricket chirps and silently dangerous tension. No foot-falls from late working fathers or drunk laughter from teenagers and Spain never knew he could miss something he had never recognized before.

“How’s little Italy?” Spain asks because he’s never been good with silence.

Romano’s mouth curves into a scowl (a pang of nice feelings at the familiarity), “Shitty. Jesus, He’s used to fuckin’ losing- he’s just not used to losing fuckin’ people. So now all he does is sit at home and cry and cook pasta and sulk and cook more pasta. I never thought I’d say this but if I see Alfredo in real time ever again, I’m going to slam it upside the head of whoever gave it to me.”

The vigor in his voice, the animosity, the secret condensation of worry under his voice are little secrets Spain has filed in his brain. His. Memories of a time when their walls weren’t so yellow with cigarette smoke and window wasn’t cracked and his apartment was a sprawling mansion.

“Always so violent,” Antonio chides, teasingly, “you shouldn’t swear so much Roma. Especially not with His name in the same sentence.”

“You’d know a lot about using his name in importune moments.”

It is then that Roma turns to him. Properly. It begins.

Spain imagines that he’s smirking rather handsomely. He wouldn’t know. He’s too busy focusing on the champagne glass on the dusty table. The little circle of water condensed around it. A thousand tiny droplets and an ant’s sea. His fridge couldn’t be working that well could it?

Romano strides towards him and his hands ask Spain to look at him. Spain does. However reluctantly.

The face in front of him is far too old.

“I’m not a child.”

“I’m sor-“

“I’m not a child.”

“You’re not a child.”

This civil war has left him hungry for so many things. Food. Peace. Familiarity. Friends. Could God really fault him for wanting this one solace?

Romano takes off his shirt and he’s beautiful. Sunshine brown skin, sharp cheek bones and those eyes green eyes that hold the weight of worlds. Really. Divine. Incredible. Like one of those gods Rome used to worship.

Spain says as much. Romano snorts and his cheeks, Spain notices disappointedly, don’t turn a pretty shade of pink.Instead, his finger traces the sharp corner of Spain’s collar bone, “Shirt off.”

(Unapologetic and demanding. Spain wishes he could be like that. Spain remembers when he was like that.)

When it comes off, however, there is silence again. A blanket of tense mourning. Grieving. They are inside the coffin.

(“Everything you have in your fridge is expired,” Romano has said last time, his nose crinkling in disgust, “you look like a god damn corpse-“

Perhaps his words had been more real than Spain thought. )

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Spain whispers, even though it so so much worse.

Romano’s face is a casket of dark secrets and Spain wishes bitterly he had the key. His fingers trace the jagged edges of marred skin, trace all the tragedies and rotting photographs.

Guernica aches on his chest like a first degree burn. (His breath quickens a moment. The memory of the bombs, the unending screaming. The tall houses morphing into dead, hollow, bleeding bodies. Prosaic and huddled together.

All the boys that would never become men.)

A few hundred years pass by before Romano bends down, pressing his lips to broken skin.

A gasp in the dark, “you don’t need to-.”

“Shut up,” Romano hisses back. Spain can hear the choked childish sob underneath it.

So Spain lets him. His fingers threading through Romano’s hair as they do this again. Their bodies trying to fill the holes in each other. A silent wail.

Push. And pull. And it feels so much better than it should, the kettle reaching it’s boiling point, that shrill shriek before the steam. Oh god Roma. Oh god.

As they lie on the thin mattress afterwards, sweaty and empty again, the bitter smell of Romano’s now lit cigarette saturating the air, Spain realizes he hates himself.

“Aren’t you ever sad. About not dying?”

“Oh we’re dying, stupid, we’re just dying at a slower rate than the rest of them.”

“But it’ll never end,” Spain’s mouth tries to capture his clouds of thoughts. An impossible task, “the pain. It’ll never end. The wars- they’ll never end. No matter what the politicians promise. Humans are never done fighting with each other.”

Romano quirks an eyebrow, “you’re jealous of them? You’ve been on the field. You know the treachery of a dead, young soldier. They don’t have enough time to live and then they go and do stupid shit like signing up and get sad when they die because surprise surprise they aren’t fulfilled.”

Spain closes his eyes. When had Romano’s thoughts become so mature? “But they aren’t alone.”

“Misery together is just as good as misery in solitude.”

“You need to watch some of those new things called romance films.”

“You need to /stop/ watching them. Your brain cells are weak as it is. This is just intellectual suicide.”

“They’re nice and they have happy endings. We need to steal what little moments we can.”

Romano watches the way his smoke cloud curls above him. Carbon dioxide and nicotine, “‘this one of those moments?”

Silence.

This time it is Spain’s mouth that is zipped shut. He’s too terrified to label this yet.

There is a canyon between them.

“Do you think you could love me?”

“I already love you, Roma, you know that.”

“I mean.” His fingers tap the cigarette. Ash falls to the side, “could you love me like they do in those shitty romance films?”

He could. He knows he could. The twist of his stomach when he sees Romano in his door step, the curve of his cheek, grin, scowl. Laugh, mocking or happy, his hand covering his mouth in blasphemy.

His smile.

“I don’t know,” he says instead. Too tired to push him away completely but too terrified of what this could turn into if he doesn’t.

For now, this is enough. The warm body beside him.

* * *

The day after the sun screens into the room like a sigh, highlighting all the cracks in the stone flooring. Spain wakes up to an empty, lonely bed that for once feels far too big. 

There are no birds singing in Barcelona today.

He curls up in himself and hears the crinkle of paper taped to his chest. He picks it up.

‘Clean up your shitty house better next time. I deserve a fucking palace to fuck in. Sy you next week.’

**Author's Note:**

> Might write a sequel. And / or prequel. 
> 
> Guirnica is also a painting by Pablo Picasso. Strongly suggest you look it up!!


End file.
